Introduction

As this is my first ever blog, I would like to give an introduction to who I am, what I do, and my reasons for creating this blog, as well as a quick explanation of how to find what you are looking for in my blog.

First of all, my name is McConnell Franklin and I am 20 years old. I am a second year student and Computer Science major at Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT. I also race bicycles. I race Professional on the mountain (Cross Country and Short Track), Category 1 in Cyclocross, and Category 4 on the road (simply because I have not done enough races to be racing in the category I should be racing). In my spare time (of which I have very little), I spend quite a bit of time on the computer learning as much about computers as I can. I am also interested in video, web design, GPS, and programming.

I started this blog for a number of reasons. First of all, I wanted to create a place where people could go to stay updated with my racing (if they were so inclined). I know that there are quite a few Pro racers who keep blogs so that anyone who is interested can get the first hand story of the most recent race or training ride, and I figured it was a good way of letting people know what was happening without sending out mass e-mails to people who might not want to know. (Search for tags: cycling, training, racing)

Secondly, I wanted a place where I could talk about the interesting things I learned on the computer during my many hours of knowledge searching. I know that in my quest to understand the inner workings of computers, how to program, web design, etc, I frequently relied upon blogs, discussions and forums to help me find the answer to strange, uncommon questions, and therefore hope that anyone who is interested in a (hopefully) easy to understand and read explanation of some of the more interesting things I have learned about computers will begin to visit my blog on occasion to learn something new. (Search for tags: technology, computer)

Third, I created this blog as a place to write about my adventures abroad. Although I am currently still in the United States, I have made the decision to take a gap year next year to travel. I will be leaving in September of 2008 for Japan, where I will be staying for 4 or 5 months, and will then travel to Argentina for another 4 or 5 months. I plan to spend my time in these countries meeting as many people as I can, making contacts, learning the language, and racing my bike. I made the decision to take this gap year for a variety of reasons: It has been too long since I was overseas, I need a break from class and homework, I want to ride and race my bike internationally, doing a study abroad year through Middlebury would be very difficult because of the Computer Science major requirements, and I feel that my Spanish, and Japanese to a lesser extent, is at the point where immersing myself in the culture will quickly improve my fluency in the language. (Search for tags: travel, "country name")

Lastly, I plan to use this blog to write about other important happenings in my life. Most likely, these will be stories or important events, or simply updates on what and how I am doing. (Search for tags: life, stories, updates)

To end this lengthy post, I want to explain how I came up with the name of my blog. Initially, I was planning on calling it "Conflict of Interests" and giving it the URL of "conflictofinterests.blogspot.com", but someone had already taken that name. Then, as I thought about it more, I realized that I do not believe that my interests conflict with one another, and rather that they are simply an interesting and unique mixture. With that in mind, I decided that I would title my blog "No Conflict of Interests" and decided I needed to use an acronym of sorts because "noconflictofinterests.blogspot.com" is a little wordy. So, I searched for a very long time for words that contain the "NCOI" and eventually stumbled upon "UNCOILED". I settled upon this name because I feel that it accurately describes certain aspects of my life.

"I am simply a piece of string that has come uncoiled and is stretched across a variety of interests."